Two-and-a-half years ago, technology wizard and Stanford University Master of Science in Computer Science graduate David Gunningjoined with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to manage a program to develop explainable artificial intelligence. And listen up: The XAI arena, as it's abbreviated, is where we want to head -- this is where technology development ought to focus. XAI is the common-sense older brother in a digitized world filled with flashy, privacy-invading, data-gobbling gadgets and machine-controlling bullies. The goal of XAI, Gunning said, in a recent telephone conversation, is not so much to "take human thinking and put it into machines," as nearly all of today's artificial intelligence seeks to do. Rather, XAI's aim is to equip the machine with the ability to tell its human operators why it arrives at the conclusions it does -- to make the machine explain itself, so to speak. That means humans still stay at the helm.